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 Michael
Pachter, Wedbush Morgan Securities:
Under-reported
announcements or events:
The
announcement that I thought was missed was the opening of the Xbox Live
Dashboard interface to the internet. Later this year, Microsoft will allow
members to access last.fm and to select music, to access Netflix and instantly
watch films/TV shows, to access Facebook and interact with other friends, and
to access Twitter and post/read tweets.
In
order for this to happen, Microsoft has to open up the Xbox Live interface and
for the first time will let Xbox Live members use the built-in browser as a
browser.
Admittedly, the selection is limited to these four sites, but it's a
start, and is a glimpse into the future of the Xbox 360 as a home
media/internet hub. I think that this announcement was far and away the most
important one of the show, and think that the media completely missed its
importance.
Ultimately,
Microsoft appears intent on positioning the Xbox 360 as a functioning computer
that happens to be located in the living room and is connected to the
television. This gives the company a huge jump start on a hopeful Apple, which
has as yet to make a dent in sales of its AppleTV (intended for the same
purpose).
Microsoft appears to me to understand that it can leverage its 30
million installed base advantage if it moves quickly, and Apple will have a
long way to go in order to catch up. By far, this was the most important
announcement of E3.
Favorite
or least favorite things about the event:
My
professional favorite was that E3 was back to an appropriate size, and that the
show attracted media attention. This is key to generating consumer interest,
and I think it will help reinvigorate sales later in the year.
My personal
favorites were the multiplayer Super
Mario Bros. Wii game, the return of booth babes, the parties, and the
ability to see a lot of people that I haven't seen in a year or more.
Is E3
finally back in the game?
Yes,
E3 is way back, and it matters a lot. This year's E3 was a pleasant experience,
and it was right-sized.
There was a big enough presence to create a feeling of
something huge, but few enough people that the space could be navigated easily.
I think that the booth size limitation was a great idea, as the aisles between
booths were wide.
The
media was there in force, and the media presence will likely be much larger
next year, providing ample "free" publicity. The participants, to
varying degrees, attracted a lot of attention with celebrity sightings, whether
at parties or press conferences. I think bigger is better, and this year's show
was plenty big.
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What coverage I did see was very impressive, and the show looked amazing on TV. Hopefully next year I can attend in person!
But the PS3 controller DID impressed me.
Sony had the Eyepet, a game up for release late 2009 that is very similar to Milo but with less smoke and mirrors and more content and more interaction. But even so Sony is reported to only have shown 'tech' and no games for this casual drive' even though what they showed was both. Both the tech demo that showed that the new controller was fully functional.
And then they also showed a title that is doing most of the things of 'Milo' and in my opinion presenting a far more interesting interactive character as it is a Pet rather than a human.
You are encouraged to touch a pet.
Touching a boy?
The question I see is, who is interested in these games? Eyepet is squarely aimed at kids, 5-10. But who wants to play with Milo? He is a kid that you have to talk with, so that will eliminate the very youngest audience and equally so the older audience who'd rather be playing skill based or plot focused games.
First off, Motion Controls on the Wii are a terrible example of innovation for the most part, because there's not a huge number of games that use them correctly, instead opting to add waggle, etc. But I'm not criticizing that. I think the better comparison, especially after statements like "Natal appeared to me to be a technological solution in search of a problem", would be the DS.
When the DS was announced, hordes of people on message boards etc. criticized it as a gimmick, saying "why do I need 2 screens or a touch screen to play these games? I could just use one big screen and the games I know could be done in THIS way instead.". An example of a game that would have completely lost its appeal without the DS, however, would be something like Kirby Canvas Curse. It used the new mechanics to make a new style of game, and I still think it's one of the best examples of a DS game. It could have been done with a mouse, sure, but that's not portable, and Nintendo doesn't have a mouse on any of their platforms.
Natal has the potential to be the same. Rather than saying "I had a very hard time envisioning playing Modern Warfare 3 using Natal", think about what the technology offers that other technologies don't. Disregarding whether it's possible with Natal or not, the style of implementation could be used for things like Head Tracking, which is something people have been vocal about wanting on forums, but moreso than that I think of the Milo demo (real or not) where the goggles (or some other object... can't remember what) are thrown out and the player catches them. Getting a sense of depth between you and the game could add something that we're not really seeing right now, and it's not as simple as saying "yeah but you could do that with a controller / motion controls", because they just don't translate as well.
I've seen some of the technology of Project Natal easily demonstrated in blogs and other events by the engineers that now work on the project. It is like Microsoft went around the web and threw money at these people to come work for them. It really was a brilliant idea to combine all these ideas into one device. Can't wait for the next step after that: Somatosensory haptic gloves and Augmented Reality glasses, then you can't argue that Natal is unpractical.
As for E3, I didn't attend this year because I really wasn't paying attention and didn't know it was going back to more of a show format. When I attended back in 2006 I did notice that 1 in every 2 badges read GameStop or EBgames. They need to kick the retail out, seriously limit it to studios(developers), publishers, manufacturers and the media(and the small amount of industry students they allow). Retail gets advanced copies of these games to play already.